A Primer in Baby Sign Language

Baby is getting older, smarter, stronger and much more engaged and expressive.  They understand what's happening around them, but talking is still a little way off, so why not help find other ways to communicate?

Finding times when baby is more temperamental than others and you play a guessing game to figure out what they want or need?  Frustrating for everyone, baby included.

We chatted all this and more this week in Baby Basics with a primer in Baby Sign Language.  Babies can learn to sign before they learn to communicate verbally, so why not start the conversation early?  You'll learn something together, share bonding time, and learn to talk to each other sooner.

Here are some of the beginner tips we discussed..

When to start

• 6-9 mos - when baby starts using their hands; if you're doing "bye-bye" and blowing kisses, you're already signing.  Start with basics.
• 7-9 mos - baby will likely start signing back
• 12 mos - start introducing secondary signs, building more vocabulary; this period will get more active.

How to do it

• Choose some simple signs to start with using basic communication words that relate to baby's experiences - Mommy, Daddy, Milk, Eat, Happy, Bath, Sleep, Diaper, More, No More, Signs for favorite toys, pets or things that they get excited about.
• Say the word while you sign and do it frequently, guide baby's hands in doing the sign, do the sign on the baby.  Repetition is key.
• Be patient, baby won't sign back right away, but they will understand and eventually it will click.  

Learning Signs

There are a number of baby signing class options in Toronto and a great one is My Smart Hands.  To learn a few signs that we can get in practice with, we downloaded and tried out a great app from My Smart Hands that shows founder Laura Berg signing words you may want to learn.

We loved it and highly recommend the app - there is a lite version for FREE to try it out; we got the full version at only $2.99 (iOS) with a lot of vocabulary words to try out.

MY SMART HANDS BABY SIGN LANGUAGE DICTIONARY

Avail in the iTunes App Store here;   Avail on Google Play here

How proud will you be when baby tells you what they want for the first time?!   Do you use signing with your little one?  Tell us about it...